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A year in the hot seat

Europe must keep up the pressure in 2011 for a strong global deal on climate change, says Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action. Although the international climate negotiations in Cancún last month concluded with a better agreement than had been expected, she believes there is still a long way to go to nail down a new climate treaty.

Back in her office on the ninth floor of the Berlaymont, the Commission headquarters, Hedegaard is brisk and businesslike about what has to be done to make the most of the Cancún negotations, which, she says, exceeded expectations.

The EU came away from Cancún with “the balanced package” that she wanted – that is, agreements on forestry, adaptation and climate finance, as well as an unexpected breakthrough on the politically sensitive issue of monitoring China’s emissions.

The Cancún agreement “really stretched some parties…they really went as far as they could go,” she says, naming Japan and Russia. Europe, she says, is cast in the role of “demandeur”. “We still have things we would like to see,” she observes, while “there are probably others who would not mind that much if the Cancún agreement was basically that”.

In Hedegaard’s view, the EU’s “stepwise approach” – working through issues one by one, rather than the all-or-nothing approach that came unstuck in December 2009 at the Copenhagen meeting – has helped the international talks recover their momentum. Now she wants a similar reflection period inside the EU to work out its next steps on the road to the UN climate summit in South Africa at the end of 2011. The first round of climate-change pledges under the Kyoto protocol are to expire at the end of 2012, so time is short to find a successor agreement.

Legal complications

The most difficult issue will be the legal form of a climate deal, Hedegaard thinks. Should a new climate agreement be an extension of the Kyoto protocol (as favoured by developed countries) or a brand new agreement (as preferred by some developed countries, notably Japan)?

The issue nearly derailed agreement in Cancún, which was saved only by postponing the question. Another challenge in South Africa will be getting countries to take action to reduce their emissions in line with the overall goal of keeping global warming below 2°C. Hedegaard notes that current pledges “bring us 60% of the way to staying below 2°C…we still have some work to do”.

Fact File

EU climate commissioner – the hardest job, or rebel without a cause?

Connie Hedegaard is the first-ever European commissioner for climate action, a post created by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to show that the EU is serious about tackling global warming. Almost one year into the job, how is she faring?

Tomas Wyns, a campaigner at the Climate Action Network, gives her credit for helping to keep international negotiations inching forward after the letdown of the Copenhagen climate conference.

“Connie Hedegaard has picked up really quickly after Copenhagen and shown some courageous creative thinking in how to move the climate debate forward,” he says.

But the commissioner has not made friends in industries that are heavy users of carbon. The paper industry (in advertisments in this newspaper) has labelled her Europe’s “new tax commissioner” for overseeing tighter rules on emissions trading. The steel industry has claimed that EU policy could lead to the de-industrialisation of Europe.

Observers’ views Perceptions of the effectiveness of the climate-action commissioner are shaped by their views on climate change. Derk-Jan Eppink, a Belgian MEP in the European Conservatives and Reformists group, says it was a bad idea to create the climate-action dossier in the first place. “As a political issue it has been fading and public support has been crumbling,” he says.

Eppink detects that Hedegaard has a “missionary zeal about climate change” but thinks the combination of public opposition, leaked University of East Anglia emails, the absence of US legislation and cold winters have left her “a rebel without a cause”.

Tests ahead Claude Turmes, a Luxembourgeois Green MEP, says that this will be a critical year. “2010 was a good start for Hedegaard but the litmus test for the climate commissioner will be in 2011 – will she be able to move the Commission and member states to accept a 30% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020? Everything else, like talk on possible 2030 targets, is pure diversion from what really counts – early reductions in Europe to re-launch the momentum of the international talks,” he says.

For Chris Davies, a British Liberal who sits on the European Parliament’s environment committee, Hedegaard will never succeed unless the rest of the Commission buys into climate action. At the moment, the Commission remains “departmentalised” and shows “great reluctance to endorse her agenda”, he thinks.

“It is an impossible job for the commissioner to lead on the international stage while she has one hand tied behind her back fighting turf wars in the Commission.

“If the Commission collectively wants Connie Hedegaard to succeed, she will succeed. If the Commission does not back her, she will fail.”

Cancun decisions

Goal to keep global warming below 2°C. This was pledged at Copenhagen last year, but is now in a UN document for the first time. Review of climate goals in 2015 to assess whether a commitment to keep global warming below 1.5°C is needed. Green Climate Fund to be set up that will channel most climate money, with the aim of securing total funds of $100 billion (€76bn) per year for developing countries by 2020. Developing countries that protect forests will receive finance. Process to ensure transparent monitoring and reporting of emission-reduction pledges agreed.

Despite this, she is not at the moment calling on the EU to deepen its emissions reduction target, from the current target of a 20% reduction by 2020 to 30%. She rejects the idea that Europe’s credibility is lost by not upping its pledge. “Everyone knows that you cannot find a region in the world that has made as ambitious targets as Europe,” she says, adding: “In the very close future, it is not very likely that some of the other big economies will move a lot on this one.”

The question will, however, return. While Hedegaard does not advocate 30%, she argues that doing less now will mean having to do more later. “If you did not do a lot by 2020, then you would have a more steep road to 2050,” she says.

And Europe may lose out to other competitors in the race for green technologies: “The choice we have in Europe is whether we want to do more to stimulate our own innovation, to stimulate our own green growth.”

America’s ‘problem’

Since Copenhagen, the EU seems to have put less stress on the US. Hedegaard does not see the absence of climate legislation in the US as a stumbling block to a climate deal. “The lack of legislation is primarily the Americans’ problem,” she says, a shift in tone compared to the pleas for American action from EU politicians in the run-up to Copenhagen.

In the coming months, the EU’s domestic action will be to the fore again. This spring the Commission will publish a low-carbon plan for 2050, with ‘roadmaps’ for energy and transport, as well as a proposal for a target for greenhouse-gas reduction by 2030.

Controlling emissions in the transport sector could be the trickiest task, but the commissioner steers away from a message of blanket austerity. “Transport since 1990 has only gone one way and that is up. They have increased their emissions significantly in the last 20 years. So to have substantial reductions by 2050, one should not think that is very easy.” Individual mobility is still desirable, she says, but “the mobility of the individual” must not mean “the immobility of the collective”.